


Learning to Trust (It's a Slow, Slow Dance)

by flipflop_diva



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Awesome Natasha Romanov, BAMF Maria, Eventual Smut, F/F, Falling In Love, Natasha Needs a Hug, POV Maria Hill, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Training
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-13
Packaged: 2018-03-30 11:38:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3935401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing Maria Hill wants is to be temporarily assigned to handle Natasha Romanoff, the former Russian assassin who is just two months into her time at SHIELD, but when Nick Fury asks for something, it's not really a request. If only she knew it might just be the beginning of the best thing that's ever happened to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning to Trust (It's a Slow, Slow Dance)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluemermaid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemermaid/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Crystallove! This one is for you :)

“I’m worried about Agent Romanoff.”

Maria Hill looked up from the files she was reading and frowned at SHIELD Director Nick Fury. “Sir?” she said.

“Coulson said she’s not fitting in.”

Maria frowned. “Are you sure? All her mission reports have been very successful.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Fury shook his head. “Coulson said all she does is work and train. She isn’t fitting in with the other agents.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“We do want her to trust us.”

“We do?” Maria raised an eyebrow. “We don’t trust _her_. Not yet anyway. It’s going to take more than two months for that.”

“Coulson seems to think that she’s terrified she’s going to do something wrong and we’re going to either hand her back to the KGB or execute her, I’m not sure. He thinks, and I quote here, ‘she’s too traumatized to make a life here’.”

“I don’t see it,” Maria said.

“Coulson’s her handler. I trust him.”

“So Coulson thinks that Romanoff — a woman who has been killing people since she was what? Five? — is scared of us and because of that she is keeping a safe distance and that’s? What? Going to prevent her from being a good agent?”

“He has a point,” Fury said.

“Except I don’t think she’s scared of anything,” Maria said. “So if she’s not giving us her trust, it’s because of her, not us. The psych reports didn’t indicate any such thing.”

“And you think she’s going to open up to a psychiatrist? Even with the lie detectors?”

“Of course not,” Maria said. “That’s my point. She’s a master manipulator. She’s controlling this entire situation, making people see what she wants them to see.”

“Or.” Fury pressed the tips of his fingers together. “She’s a twenty-year-old child who has been thrust into a world she doesn’t entirely understand, and she actually _is_ scared.”

“Coulson’s words?” Maria asked.

Fury nodded. 

“And what do you think?” she said. “Honestly?”

“I think there’s no harm in going along with what Coulson wanted.”

“Which is what?”

“Give her someone else she can trust. Show her we’re SHIELD, not the Red Room.”

Maria sighed. “Why do I have a feeling you’re about to ask me to do something?”

“You’re a woman,” Fury said.

Maria’s eyes narrowed. “I feel like I’m about to be offended.”

“The only people she talks to when she’s not being given orders are Coulson and Clint Barton. It would not be a bad thing for her to have a female agent to talk to. Or bond with.”

Maria almost rolled her eyes. “And what do you have in mind? Do you want me to braid her hair and paint her nails?”

Fury smiled. “Only if you’d like to. I’m assigning you to be her handler for a month. Coulson and Barton are about to go on an extended mission. This is a good chance for you to find out — for us — who Agent Romanoff really is. I need to know whose side she is actually on.”

Maria nodded. Now she was beginning to understand. “So you want me to be her friend to do that?”

“Better than being her enemy.”

•••

Melinda May took a sip of her tea and pursed her lips. “So you get to train the scary Russian assassin who everyone is deathly afraid of,” she said. “Lucky you.”

Maria snorted from her seat across from her at the small cafeteria table. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Lucky me indeed.”

Melinda smiled. “You never know. Maybe she’s not so bad.”

“Yeah,” Maria said. “She seems like a barrel of laughs.”

Melinda laughed, but then her face turned serious. “Phil likes her,” she said. “He’s a good judge of character. He knows good people.”

“Does he really like her,” Maria said, “or is just hoping she works out because his ass — and Barton’s — is on the line if she doesn’t?”

Melinda seemed to think about that. “I think he really likes her,” she said finally. “He said something to me about everyone needing a second chance.”

“She’s one of the best assassins in the world.”

“Who was trained by the Red Room,” Melinda said. “They did some seriously fucked up shit to those girls.”

“Yeah,” Maria said. “Fury wants me to show her that SHIELD is different.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. He thinks she needs to be friendlier, to get to know people.”

“There’s an impromptu party tonight,” Melinda said. 

“You think we should send the scary assassin to a party?” Maria said, and she grinned. 

As if to prove her point, the door to the cafeteria opened and the agent in question walked in. Romanoff didn’t look at anyone — she just walked to the front to grab some food — but everyone else in the room looked at her. It was almost comical how people practically leapt out of her way.

Maria shook her head. “So a party?” she said to Melinda.

Melinda took another sip of her tea. “Why not?” she said. “It could be fun.”

•••

“You wanted to see me, Ma’am?”

Maria looked up from her laptop to see Agent Romanoff standing in front of her. She looked like she had just come from a training session. She wasn’t dressed in her standard SHIELD uniform that she’d been wearing when they saw her in the cafeteria earlier. Now she was dressed in a black tank top and pants, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. There was a bruise on her cheek that looked fresh, but she didn’t appear to be bothered by it. In fact, she looked as calm, collected and unaffected as she always looked.

Maria wondered again what Fury (and Coulson) could possibly be seeing that she didn’t.

“Yes, I did,” she said now to Romanoff.

“Have I done something wrong?” Romanoff asked.

“Not exactly.”

“I don’t understand.”

Maria folded her hands. “At SHIELD,” she said, “we like to encourage trust and partnership between our agents. When you’re out in the field, you need to know that the others have your back.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“The others right now think you’re going to kill them.”

Romanoff blinked, but other than that, she kept her features schooled. Maria couldn’t tell what she was thinking. 

“I’m not,” Romanoff said.

“Somehow that’s not very comforting,” Maria said.

“You want me to fix this?”

“Fury wants this fixed.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“He thinks you need to be more social. Make friends.”

“Make … friends?” Romanoff repeated.

“Yes, make friends,” Hill said.

Romanoff didn’t say anything to that, nor did her expression change, but Maria had a feeling it was not what she had wanted to hear.

“There’s a party,” Maria said, “tonight. Nothing fancy. Just agents hanging out, having a little fun. Fury thinks it keeps morale up to give people free food and alcohol. You need to go.”

“To the party?”

“Yes. Go to the party, meet people, make friends.”

Romanoff frowned. “But Clint …,” she started. Maria held up a hand.

“Not with Barton, Romanoff,” she said. “Or with Coulson. Just you. _You_ go to the party. _You_ make friends. That’s an order. Do you understand?”

Romanoff nodded. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Good. Then you are excused.”

•••

“Okay, she really is an awkward turtle, isn’t she? I don’t think I expected that.” Bobbi Morse flipped her long blonde hair back over her shoulder and took a sip of her drink. 

Maria and Melinda both shot her looks.

“What?” Bobbi said. “You think she’s not?” She gestured over to where Romanoff was standing against the back wall, in the same position she had been standing in for almost the past hour. The wide berth of space around her not filled with humans when every other inch of the room was filled with people laughing and talking was not lost on any of them.

“I just wouldn’t put it that way,” Maria said.

Romanoff had tried, Maria would give her that much. She’d changed out of her training clothes and into a pair of jeans and a bright purple shirt that someone in the undercover division must have given her. Barton had confirmed that Romanoff hadn’t bought a single thing since they recruited her, and there was no way she’d had time to go shopping. And her hair was down and curly. 

She _looked_ almost like everyone else, but the way she was standing and the hard look in her eyes were not helping. There was a reason no one was talking to her.

“Okay,” Bobbi was saying, “then how would you put it?”

“She’s a cold-blooded killer who doesn’t want to make friends?” Maria suggested.

“Yeah,” Bobbi said. She frowned. “I don’t really like that description.”

Maria laughed and handed Bobbi her drink. “I need to go talk to her. I’ll be back.”

She headed across the room. Romanoff saw her coming, and for a second, Maria saw something flash across her face, almost akin to panic, but it was gone so fast, Maria thought maybe she was imagining it. She stopped in front of her and gazed at her from head to toe. Romanoff stared straight back, not moving.

“I told you to make friends,” Maria said.

Romanoff nodded. “Yes, Ma’am,” she said.

“And you think standing in the corner is going to make you friends?”

“No.”

“Then get over there and make some.” Maria pointed to the crowds of people milling around.

“I …” Romanoff’s eyes darted to the side, and there was that flash of something again. Maria frowned.

“You have had a friend before, haven’t you, Romanoff?”

Romanoff leveled her gaze, her face completely neutral again. “Friends are unnecessary complications in our line of work, Ma’am,” she said, and the way she said it made Maria’s blood run cold. It was like she was repeating something she had heard over and over.

Something that had been drilled into her since she was a child …

For the first time since Fury had talked to her, Maria felt an ache of empathy for the other woman. It wasn’t that Maria hadn’t known some of the stuff the Red Room was capable of — she had looked through the files after all — but reading something and understanding it … 

Maybe Fury had been right. When it came to their world, maybe Romanoff — Natasha, her name was Natasha — really was a little lost.

Maria smiled gently at her. “Look,” she said, “I know you know how to socialize at a party. We have a lot of photos of you at all sorts of gatherings, with all sorts of people. This isn’t anything you haven’t done before.”

Natasha frowned. “I …” she started, but she didn’t finish. “Yes, Ma’am,” she said instead.

Maria studied her, until something clicked. _Oh._

“But you’ve never been to a party as _you_ before, have you?” she said. 

Natasha hesitated, as if she really didn’t want to answer, but then she shook her head. “No, Ma’am.”

Well, that explained it. 

Maria took a breath. “Okay, let’s try something just for today,” she said. “I’m going to give you an assignment.”

“An assignment?”

“Yes. You see those people over by the bar?” Maria pointed, and Natasha nodded. “Go talk to them. You’re playing as a new employee, one who is really sweet and innocent and just wants to learn her way around. Get some advice. That kind of thing.”

“And what is the objective of my assignment?” Natasha asked.

Maria smiled. “For now, to make them like you. Can you do that?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, then go on.”

Natasha blinked, slowly, and in a second, her entire demeanor changed. She relaxed her shoulders, her face transformed into a bright smile and she looked nervous yet confident. Just the way a new employee might look. She nodded to Maria and then headed off in the direction Maria had told her to go.

“Huh,” Maria said to herself, and she headed back to her friends.

Two hours later, Maria, Bobbi and Melinda were watching Natasha laugh with a bunch of other new SHIELD agents, all of them trading stories about past missions.

“How exactly is she supposed to make friends if she isn’t being herself with them?” Bobbi said to Maria.

“It’s not about making friends. It’s about getting people to trust her.”

“And they’re going to trust someone who lies to them?” 

“They don’t know she’s lying,” Maria said.

“I’m not really sure this is what Fury was going for,” Melinda said, nudging Maria in the arm.

Maria shrugged. “Baby steps,” she said. “We have to start somewhere.”


End file.
